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* The average Shakespeare play had 30,000 words in it - more than the average person could need in their lifetime. He invented 1,700 new words - he turned verbs into nouns and nouns into verbs.

* 100 years earlier Chaucer was writing the Canterbury Tales in English, while the upper classes spoke French and Latin.

* Caxton invented the printing press in 1470.

* Shakespeare wrote about foreign places a lot, but he was only transported by his imagination. E.g. in the entire Merchant of Venice he never mentions it's built over water.

* Language in Shakespeare's plays is a mixture of vulgar and sophisticated. In 1592 he was said to have been stealing others' works.

* Shakespeare and Marlowe were born in the same year. Marlowe went to University at Cambridge, Shakespeare didn't - however he was an actor and Marlowe wasn't, so Shakespeare had the advantage of knowing what it would be like for an actor delivering these lines. But, Marlowe is the only playwright who can match him.

* Shakespeare NEVER invents any new plots.

* The "Chronicle of England, Scotland and Wales" of 1587 is a